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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798288">Modus Tollens</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises'>fanfictiongreenirises</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Batman Bingo 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst with a Happy Ending, Batfamily Dynamics (DCU), Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Cassandra Cain is Batgirl, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson-centric, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, No Cockroaches Were Harmed In The Making Of This Fic, Supernatural Elements, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Touch-Starved, but don't worry he'll get hugged, no beta we typo like mne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 18:36:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,227</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798288</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick is cursed to kill anyone he touches.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barbara Gordon &amp; Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain &amp; Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain &amp; Tim Drake &amp; Dick Grayson &amp; Jason Todd &amp; Bruce Wayne &amp; Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson &amp; Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson &amp; Clark Kent, Dick Grayson &amp; Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson &amp; Jason Todd, Tim Drake &amp; Dick Grayson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Batman Bingo 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622032</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bat Hugs, Dick &amp; Ensemble, escapism (to forget that the world is a burning hellscape), everybody loves dick</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Modus Tollens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the "Touch Starved" square on my Batman Bingo card!</p><p>ngl, I've lowkey been planning this fic since a month or so before I got my card, so when it had touch starved, it was practically the universe Telling me to write this. i'd aimed for it to be like 10k but we can all see that that really didn't happen lol</p><p>Warnings: <br/>- towards the end of the fic, there are parts where there's self-loathing and self-hatred, and some suicidal thoughts. <br/>- animal death in the first part of the fic. <br/>if you want me to warn you about what areas have any of this and give you a brief overview of the scene, please ask.</p><p>Disclaimer: I don't own DC ^~^</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>THIS FANFICTION IS HOSTED ON <b>ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN</b>, WHERE YOU CAN READ IT FOR <b>FREE</b>. IF YOU’RE READING THIS ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE, IT WAS POSTED THERE <b>WITHOUT</b> THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="row entry-attr">
  <p><span class="word-syllables">modus tol·lens</span> <span class="prs"><span class="syl-break">|</span> <span class="first-slash">\</span><span class="pr"> -ˈtäˌlenz</span> <span class="last-slash">\</span></span></p>
</div><div class="row headword-row">
<p></p><div class="col"><p>
      <span class="vg-ins"><span class="il plural"><em>plural</em> </span><strong><span class="if">modi tollentes</span></strong><span class="first-slash">\</span> <span class="prt-a"><span class="mw">-(ˌ)täˈlen‧ˌtēz </span></span><span class="last-slash">\</span></span>
    </p></div><div class="col"><p>
      <span class="vg-ins"> <span class="last-slash">a valid form of argument in which the consequent of a conditional proposition is denied, thus implying the denial of the antecedent (as, if A is true, B is true; but B is false; therefore A is false). also considered <em>method of denying</em>.</span> </span>
    </p></div></div><p>It began because of a cat, if you can believe it.</p><p>But first, there came a group of men who had apparently looted the Scarecrow’s stash of chemicals and then added black magic on top of it.</p><p>Dick hadn’t known about the black magic part when he first began this chase. Bodies were dropping all over the place, first in Gotham – which Bruce had been looking into – and then in the ‘Haven, at which point Dick was called into Gotham.</p><p>Blood tests showed perfect matches with previous solutions they’d run into before. The only difference was that the victims were dying in the strangest of situations.</p><p>There’d been one man who had died from scratching his head right through to his brain – normal enough, when one considered some of the effects that Crane’s potions caused. But one victim had died when live birds had eaten their way out of her stomach; she had tested positive for a chemical cocktail in her veins, but there was no rational explanation for the birds. Then there had been the man who had one day gone for a walk in the park and been attacked from all sides by every insect in the vicinity.</p><p>None of them had the same substance in their blood, but they were all classic Scarecrow. All formulas that Batman had logged into both the Batcomputer and his brain.</p><p>And now Dick had stumbled on one of them in a dodgy warehouse. One corner was lit with bloodred candles, the dripping wax eerie in the dim lighting. There was an altar, satanic scribbling in chalk, a few dead animals here and there, and a couple of bowls of what Dick assumed was blood.</p><p>So it didn’t take any sort of genius to conclude that there was magic – and black magic at that – in play here.</p><p>“You fellas do this as a hobby?” he asked lightly, dropping down from the beams.</p><p>The three men in the room jumped, whirling around and waving guns at him. Dick sighed, leaping away from the wave of bullets that came raining down on him.</p><p>It was lucky the lighting was bad, because these thugs weren’t bad shots.</p><p>“So tell me,” he called, “do you add a bit of squirrel blood to the gas or something? Read out some hoodoo from an ancient book made from human skin?”</p><p>One of them snarled. “The ones we’ve killed aren’t innocent. I know you’ve done your research. You <em>know</em> what they did!”</p><p>Dick landed behind him and swept his leg out from under him, knocking his gun away. The man fell to the ground with a thud. “That doesn’t mean you can just…make them <em>scratch</em> themselves to death!” He kicked out with his left foot, hitting the second man in the gut and causing him to fall backwards with a crash.</p><p>Thug #3 was still shooting, somehow with infinite bullets. He blew a cloud of some sort of powder at Dick, who didn’t turn his head in time and got at least one lungful of it. Immediately, the floor beneath his feet turned into quicksand, and he was flailing his arms around as he tried to keep his balance and not sink.</p><p>Dick shot his grapple into the air, yanking himself out of the quicksand that disappeared the second he’d left the ground. There were more bullets. One of them hit the beam he was on and suddenly a swarm of wasps was chasing him. Dick resisted the urge to yelp, instead swinging back down past the men on the ground floor, hoping the insects would either disappear or go after someone else.</p><p>By the time another cloud of dust hit him and there was a raincloud showering Dick with shards of glass, he’d realised that the first thing he should’ve done was destroy the altar and pentagram.</p><p>He threw a batarang at the altar. The bowl atop it wobbled and fell, extinguishing a candle with it. Thug #1 howled in rage, while #3 ran forward to try and salvage what he could.</p><p>Dick whipped out one of his lines and wrapped Thug #3’s legs up in it. He should’ve fallen face first, but what happened instead was the man turned into a giant snake.</p><p>“Oracle?” Dick said. “You won’t <em>believe</em> what’s happening to me right now.”</p><p>Theoretically, burning the altar and the book should take away the power these men had. Dick had run with enough magic users to know that much – plus the sheer number of horror films he’d watched with the Titans.</p><p>“You need backup?” Barbara asked.</p><p>“Um,” Dick dodged a snaky tongue and grappled back to the beams in the ceiling. “No. I’m good. I just wanted to inform you, in case I become snake food—”</p><p>“Did I hear that right?”</p><p>“—that the weird deaths are all because of magic. Some guys are combining Crane’s forumulas with dark magic.”</p><p>He’d worry about the other two later. For now, Dick focused on tying the snake’s head to a beam, swinging round and round until it was thrashing. It wouldn’t hold for even a minute – the building was threatening to come down on all of them the more the snake tried to free itself (himself?) but that was all the time Dick needed.</p><p>He threw four more batarangs, each one aimed to knock over a bowl. He flipped through the air over the remaining men, swinging himself round the torso of the one from the right and aiming a kick in the face of the other with the momentum he’d built.</p><p>Another batarang to the altar, and a throw of the thug he was currently wrapped around, forcing him to fall onto the altar and bring it down with a resounding <em>smash!</em></p><p>“Sorry, guys,” Dick called. “But seriously, you need to find better hobbies.”</p><p>That was when he was suddenly sprayed with a faceful of gas. Dick coughed, trying to get his gas mask up, but it was too late. When he turned around, gasping through the haze of gas, he saw that Thug #3 was back to human shape, with the giant shed skin of the snake still hanging grotesquely from where Dick had strung it up.</p><p>Black spots were now covering over half of Dick’s vision, and his head was swimming alarmingly. He’d fallen to the ground without realising at some point. Thug #2 walked up to him, tilting his chin up and looking down on him with a sympathetic expression.</p><p>“We don’t usually kill randoms,” he said. “But your type won’t stop meddling. This way, you will feel what we felt, those months in isolation.” He leaned closer, rank breath stinging the back of Dick’s throat as he fought to stay conscious. “Every living creature you touch will die, Nightwing. Just you watch. Try informing anyone about this, they’ll die right in front of you anyway.”</p><p>Dick blacked out, but not for long. He woke to the sound of Oracle in his ear, urgently trying to get a response.</p><p>“—ightwing! I swear, if you don’t answer in the next thirty seconds, I’m sending Hood after your—”</p><p>“O,” Dick said with a wheeze. “I’m here.”</p><p>There was a sigh of relief over the comms. “What happened?” Barbara demanded in the next breath.</p><p>“Got—” <em>Got gassed</em>, was what Dick had been about to say. But he remembered the words of Thug #2, and he hesitated. He hadn’t specified how much Dick couldn’t say, and Dick couldn’t take the risk until he had answers. “They got away. Knocked me out.”</p><p>“Are you okay?” Barbara asked. “What’s your status?”</p><p>Dick stood with a wince, scanning the remains of the now trashed warehouse. “Bump on the head, maybe some stings. I’ll live. How did B and the rest of them go?”</p><p>Barbara let out a frustrated breath. “About as well as you,” she said. “But now that you’ve mentioned they’re dabbling in magic, we might be able to trace them. I’ll contact Zatanna, too. See if she knows anything that might help. The camera on you got decent quality images of the book they were using.</p><p>Dick nodded. “I’m going to go on another round, see if I can track where they went.” He kicked at the altar, toppling the candles still stuck to the top of it. He would gather whatever evidence he could find here and then call the cops. Or burn the thing down.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It was late by the time Dick swung back to his apartment, or early, depending on how you looked at it. He crawled in through the window, disabling the alarms put in place. He wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed, but he knew he’d regret not showering.</p><p>When he stepped out of the shower, there was a scratching sound he registered from the bedroom window. Dick smiled.</p><p>Damian had somehow befriended a neighbourhood stray in the few hours here and there that he’d spent in Dick’s apartment since Dick had moved in. So now the alley cat would sometimes come to Dick’s window and demand to be fed.</p><p>Dick put out a bowl and poured some dry cat food into it, placing it on the bedroom floor. He opened the window and the cat came in, a little suspicious at the lack of Damian.</p><p>“Don’t worry, I’m leaving” Dick said, backing away slowly. “You can have breakfast in peace.”</p><p>This also meant that he was now in a towel for the duration of the cat’s suspicion. Hopefully he wouldn’t get visitors. Dick had just finished his second bowl of cereal when there was a tickling feeling around his bare legs and he almost jumped onto the counter when his brain caught up and he realised it was the feline.</p><p>“Aww,” he cooed, bending down to pet it. It was surprisingly soft for a stray. “Guess the way to everyone’s heart is through their stomach.”</p><p>And then the cat jumped a bit, as though it had been startled, or struck by lightning. Dick moved back, unsure whether this was typical cat behaviour or not. The cat fell to the floor, limp and unmoving.</p><p>Dick stared at it in shock and not a small amount of horror. His hand shaking a little, he leaned down to nudge the animal. He didn’t know how one felt for a pulse on a cat, but he spread his hand over the cat’s chest, tried to feel for breath against his fingers.</p><p>There was nothing.</p><p>Dick scrambled backwards, hitting the fridge on the other side of the kitchen. He’d killed the cat – his <em>touch</em> had killed the cat, just like the man had said. He hadn’t believed him one hundred percent, because despite all he’d seen, it’d felt preposterous to think that any living creature he touched would just <em>drop dead</em>, but here it was, in plain sight.</p><p>He had to do something with the body. Dick blinked, trying to snap himself awake. The cat was small – it could fit into a shoebox that he could sneak out into a park and bury.</p><p>Getting out of the house was a nightmare and a half. Everywhere he looked, there were people he could brush elbows or hands or shoulders with and kill, just like that. The thought made something nauseous grow in the pit of his stomach.</p><p>Dick settled for not leaving the house, not until he was sure it was skin to skin contact.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The cockroach had survived being touched by his gloved hand. He touched it repeatedly for an hour straight, until it was probably rather freaked out. The second cockroach – he was so relieved he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning his apartment yet – had died the second he’d touched it with his bare hand.</p><p>The third one he took to the roof – where there were no cameras or listening devices, because that could lead to Babs or Bruce or any of them dropping dead, and Dick would sooner kill himself than have a hand in that – and spoke to its plastic container through a tube. He outlined the terms of the ‘curse’, as he was now calling it.</p><p>The cockroach dropped dead the same way as the cat and the second cockroach had. Dick’s heart sank. He’d hoped this part of the curse had been exaggerated.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>By the end of the day, he’d come to a series of conclusions:</p>
<ul>
<li>His hair, regardless of whether or not it was attached to his head, wouldn’t kill anything, so he was safe if it blew into someone’s face.</li>
<li>His spit was also fine, so he didn’t need to worry about killer drool.</li>
<li>He could talk about everything except for the actual curse itself. He could say he couldn’t touch people. He just couldn’t say his touch would kill.</li>
<li>He hadn’t been able to test what would happen if someone managed to guess about the curse, because for that he needed a human subject, which was a massive <em>no</em>.</li>
</ul><p>He was fucked, in all honesty. Because he was due to visit Gotham at the latest the following night, and there would be questions and casual touches and so many things that could go wrong.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick pondered through the recording of the night before, going through the close-ups of the book (or, <em>grimoire</em>, apparently) that Barbara had sent him. He had searches running for the men that had escaped, but so far nothing had turned up.</p><p>He dug around in his closet for a balaclava. He was lucky this hadn’t happened in summer.</p><p>Then nightfall came and he had to make an excuse to Bruce about why he couldn’t make it to Gotham.</p><p>“You have a lead?” Bruce asked, voice low and rough. Then, before Dick could say anything, he said. “I have to go. Come to the Cave tomorrow.”</p><p>Dick sighed as the line cut, but at least he didn’t have to continue his ramble-y story about his fake lead. He had until tomorrow night to figure out how to wear a balaclava at all times without raising questions.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>The distribution of the gas was through a new batch of alpha-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone, or ‘flakka’, as it was commonly known as on the streets. Symptoms included strange behaviour, agitation, paranoia, and delusions of superhuman ability. From what Jason had reported, everyone died about a week or so after ingestion.</p><p>The newest shipment of drugs, according to Tim’s intel, were to hit Bludhaven streets the following night, when it would dock. Dick would have to subtly thank Tim for the tip – now he had an excuse to avoid Gotham for another night or so, maybe three if he really milked it. He could come up with a solution to this mess by then.</p><p>Everything Dick planned to say to someone even vaguely referring to the curse, he first ran through his apartment’s ever-shrinking colony of roaches. Alfred probably hadn't considered this solution when he'd handed Dick three cans of Raid.</p><p>He called Zatanna one night, asking for advice about a ‘completely hypothetical situation that you aren’t allowed to ask me about’. She responded telling him she needed more details, and to take a bath in saltwater in case it helped.</p><p>It didn’t.</p><p>Now Nightwing wore a balaclava that was the same colour as Dick’s skin. He’d attached black string to the head, so that unless one was in close proximity, you wouldn’t really be able to tell. Or so he hoped, anyway. He was getting a lot of laughs from crooks, though; word about Nightwing being a mamma’s boy and wrapping up on cold nights was going through the ‘Haven like a wildfire. He really needed to sort out a helmet or something.</p><p>He observed the men in the dockyard through a pair of binoculars. There were five of them, one on lookout while the others paired off to unload boxes.</p><p>Leaping lightly over the containers, Dick jumped down and took out the lookout with a single strategically aimed blow, handcuffing him and putting duct tape over his mouth so he couldn’t raise an alarm when he came to. Not that Dick would take that long to go through the rest of them. These people weren’t especially skilled in fighting any more than the average thug. They carried firearms to frighten, but they were young. Dick could tell they were probably new to this game.</p><p>“Evening, gentleman,” he said, dropping down between a pair right after they’d placed down a crate. “Anyone care to tell me who you work for?”</p><p>Bullets came first, as Dick had expected, so he swept one’s feet out from under him, jabbing a hand to disarm the other. He probably wouldn’t have gotten away with something like that had they been more seasoned.</p><p>By now, the other pair had gotten wind of what was going on. Dick finished handcuffing the two to a convenient pole, and turned to the others with his escrima sticks. “You guys really wanna do this?” He’d pulled down the balaclava so his voice wouldn’t be muffled.</p><p>One of them hesitated. “Hey, man, we’re just here for quick and easy cash. You know how it is. We got rent to pay.”</p><p>“There’s better ways to do that, kid,” Dick said. “You spill everything you know, and I’ll make sure you have a legitimate job by the end of the week. Promise. Scout’s honour and all.”</p><p>The man standing next to him – or, boy, really – was looking at him shiftily. He looked like a flight risk, which was why Dick was paying more attention to him than to the kid who almost had his gun down, and why he took a fraction too long to react when that same kid brought it back up and shot him in the leg.</p><p><em>“Fuck</em>,” he hissed, pain radiating from his thigh. At least it didn’t seem like any major arteries were hit; Dick was willing to bet it’d only grazed him. He threw a batarang at the kid as things exploded into chaos.</p><p>The batarang tripped him up, but the kid was sitting up and shooting at him the next minute. Another batarang took care of that, but now Dick was down to no batarangs and one criminal still left. He used his good leg to pivot, swinging with the one that had an extra hole in it.</p><p>It struck the thug in the chest, probably cracking some ribs. Dick was too busy trying to keep the black spots from obscuring his vision, but he had no time. A hard undercut knocked him out for the time being, so Dick could focus on interrogating the boy with the wiring all around his legs and torso.</p><p>The kid was gone.</p><p>
  <em>Really off your game tonight, Grayson.</em>
</p><p>Dick wrapped a piece of gauze around his thigh and limped to where he’d left the other guys tied up. Luckily, they were still there – loyalty only went so far, he supposed.</p><p>“I’ll offer you the same deal I gave the kid who just ditched you,” he said. “Tell me what you know about this whole operation, and I’ll let you go.”</p><p>The one on the left looked up, suspicious and <em>not</em> a male, and Dick was startled by how incredibly young she was. Were these people getting kids off the street? That made no sense, to have teenagers handle such valuable shipment.</p><p>There was suddenly a pit in his stomach that had nothing to do with blood loss.</p><p>“You don’t know anything, do you?” he said, running a hand over his face. “What did they tell you you were doing here? I promise, the people who hired you won’t be able to track you down.”</p><p>“Look, mister, we had nowhere else to go,” the one on the right said. He shrunk down at the look he received from the girl, but continued talking. “This guy came, in a weird black robe or gown or some shit, told us we could stay in his house and have all the food we wanted for <em>free</em> if we agreed to run a few errands for him occasionally.”</p><p>“What’s your name, kid?” Dick asked, voice softening. When neither responded, he sighed. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me your names. Do you know the address of the house? And what sort of errands did he make you run?”</p><p>The girl spoke up this time. “At first it was like, <em>go collect firewood</em>. Which was great. And then he wanted us trap animals, which was okay until we found out what he <em>did</em> with them. This is only, like, our fifth gig. The rest were small things, like I said.”</p><p>“We stole a bunch of candles once,” the boy offered. “He wanted them in black and red, super goth of him.”</p><p>Dick huffed a laugh at that. “Okay, do you know his address?”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>In the end, Dick left for Gotham three nights later than Bruce wanted. In the meantime, he bought sleeves and gloves the colour of his flesh, and long-sleeved shirts with long necks. He then experimented on what would happen if the cockroach were to walk over his foundation lathered skin.</p><p>It survived.</p><p>Dick had breathed a sigh of relief, but foundation was no solution. Foundation rubbed off, washed off, et cetera – he couldn’t take that chance. So he bought face paint, and absolutely <em>slathered </em>his face in it until he looked like he was a step away from becoming the Joker.</p><p>Bruce was probably going to yell at him or die of fright, but Dick would take that over one of them accidentally touching him and dropping dead in an instant.</p><p>“Hey, Alfred?” Dick said when Alfred called, asking him how far away he was and whether he would be there in time for dinner. “I need to tell you something, and you have to promise me you won’t ask any questions. Matter of life and death and all. I literally can’t answer.”</p><p>Alfred’s voice was troubled. “Of course, Master Dick,” he said. “Should I get Bruce—”</p><p>“I’ll need to tell everyone, but it’s probably easiest starting with you.” Dick took a deep breath, taking one hand off the wheel to run through his hair. “You can’t touch me, okay? No skin to skin contact <em>at all</em>. I’ve got full sleeves and everything. I used a <em>balaclava</em> for when I went out as Nightwing one time, and now I have that helmet from when I was Target. I’ve got a bunch of face paint I’m gonna be wearing while I’m out of costume.”</p><p>Alfred didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, just as Dick was about to ask him how he was taking this new information, Alfred spoke. “I’m sure you have a perfectly good reason for such extremes,” he said. “Shall I inform the rest of the household?”</p><p>“Just…tell them to not touch me.” He would have to tell Jason and Cass separately, because they weren’t at the Manor but were prone to run into him at any given moment. “I’ll explain the rest in person.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Predictably, Bruce was the first person Dick saw. This was never usually be the case – Bruce was always in the Cave or in his home office when Dick visited, never one to answer the door or come out and greet him.</p><p>Dick reared back from the doorway when Bruce opened the door, having evidently been watching him come up the driveway. The fact that he still had a healing bullet wound really didn’t help his balance.</p><p>“Dick?” Bruce stepped forward, to grab his arm, maybe, but then retreated back into the Manor. He moved clear away from the entrance to make way for Dick.</p><p>“Hey, B,” Dick said with a smile. His face felt strange with all the paint on it. He was probably going to get some sort of poisoning from the paint by the end of this; maybe he should use face masks.</p><p>Bruce was staring at him. “Alfred said you’d explain everything when you got here,” he said. “Everyone’s waiting in the living room.”</p><p>Dick nodded, gesturing for Bruce to walk in front. Bruce’s gaze told him he’d better deliver on the answers, and Dick swallowed, wondering how the hell he was going to get everyone out of this alive.</p><p>To his surprise, Bruce had actually meant <em>everyone</em>: not only were Tim and Damian there, seated on opposite ends of the room, but so were Jason and Cass. Dick felt some weight lift off his shoulders at the thought of not having to convince them all over again.</p><p>“Hey, guys,” he said weakly, watching their faces as they took in the sight of his. Dick had tried to blend the red and white and brown to make it as close to his skin tone as possible, but not only was he no artist, but there was also literal <em>paint</em> on him and it was impossible to disguise that.</p><p>He’d painted his lips blue, though, just for the sake of it. This whole thing was shitty enough; he deserved to have some fun.</p><p>Jason whistled. “Leaving us for the circus again, Goldie?”</p><p>“Master Jason, what did I say about no questions?” Alfred said with a reprimanding look.</p><p>“Sorry, Alfred,” Jason said. “The striking lip colour made me forget.”</p><p>There were a number of responses to that that flitted through Dick’s head, but he ignored them all. Instead, he put down the bag he’d been carrying and got out a Tupperware box of cockroaches.</p><p>Alfred looked positively horrified.</p><p>“Grayson—” Damian begun, but Cass shushed him.</p><p>Dick peeled off the glove on his hand and opened the container, scooping one of the cockroaches out of the box with his gloved hand. He then let it climb onto his bare one. After all the experiments Dick had done with these insects, one would think he’d be used to their legs on his skin, but they still sent cold shivers down his spine. Especially when it seized on his hand and died.</p><p>He shook it off instantly into a paper bag, closed the lid on the container, and then looked up. His family was still alive, thankfully, if a little shell-shocked.</p><p>“I’m guessing the no questions thing is because you can’t answer them without us ending up like cockroach over there.” Tim said, still staring at the paper bag.</p><p>Dick grimaced. “I can’t answer that.”</p><p>Bruce was frowning, face pensive as it stared at Dick. “How did you—” he broke off before rephrasing his question. “What was the first thing you disposed of?”</p><p>“A cat,” Dick said. “It was a stray that came to eat sometimes.”</p><p>Damian squawked. “You killed Todd?” he said in outrage.</p><p>Dick blinked. <em>“Todd?”</em> he said. “When did you name it?”</p><p>“Hold on, why the fuc—<em>dge muffins</em> did you name it after <em>me?”</em> Jason demanded.</p><p>Damian crossed his arms. “He had an uncivil tongue, like you.”</p><p>Cass snickered. <em>Fitting</em>, she said, as though she didn’t have just as bad language as Jason did when she chose to. The first thing Cassandra had done after meeting Stephanie was get her to teach her ‘teenager slang’.</p><p>“Have you spoken with Zatanna?” Bruce asked.</p><p>“Yeah, but she wants more details,” Dick said.</p><p>“I’ll call her tonight,” Bruce told him, and Dick felt a second load leave his shoulders. It would be alright now. Bruce knew, and he would figure out how this was going to be fixed and Dick wouldn’t have to accidentally kill anyone in the process.</p><p>“Your leg?” Cass asked. Alfred looked on in interest.</p><p>“Bullet from when I went to bust that shipment from that tip Tim gave me,” Dick said. At Alfred’s pointed stare, he added: “It’s fine now. And I’ll fill you in on the shipment later.”</p><p>Alfred cleared his throat. “Now that that’s settled, we can get started on dinner. Master Dick, I hope you’ll at least wash that paint off your mouth before you eat.”</p><p>“I dunno, Alf—”</p><p><em>It’s not like Barbara is here,</em> Cass signed with a sly smile.</p><p>“Yeah, what’re you gonna do, murder the steak with your killer touch?” Tim said.</p><p>Dick huffed, a smile finally making him release the grip his teeth had on his lower lip. “Fine. But stay away from me.” Part of him wished he’d come to the Manor earlier, because it’d been <em>terrifying</em> sitting alone in his apartment, not daring to leave until nightfall and not answering the door for anyone or anything. He’d been infinitely relieved that Clancy was away at med school.</p><p>It was strange sitting a few seats away from everyone. Dick usually sat near Bruce, right in the middle of the gang. He’d stop foot battles under the table before they caught the attention of Alfred, and he’d nudge people on either side of him constantly. He’d steal bites from Bruce’s plate, just because he could.</p><p>Now, he stepped into the dining room – the smaller, informal one – after everyone had already been seated. He didn’t take his gloves off until after he’d sat down, placing them beside his plate. There was a brief pause in conversation when he came in, all of them acknowledging that this was <em>weird</em>.</p><p>The last time he’d hugged someone was when he was saying goodbye to Alfred and driving off to Bludhaven. That had been over a week ago. He usually hugged Damian the second he saw him.</p><p>He’d last ruffled Tim’s hair the day before that, when the younger boy had asked to spar with him.</p><p>Last time he’d seen Cass, she had visited him in Bludhaven three weeks ago, and they’d had a spy movie marathon while he’d braided her hair.</p><p>Jason he gave fist bumps to. Jason he only touched after telegraphing his movements loud and clear. And yet, Jason had patched him up after that drug bust the previous week, when he’d been knocked into a wall and come out with a concussion.</p><p>Dick forced his thoughts away when his throat tightened at the thought of never touching another living person again. He shoved a spoonful of food into his mouth. It was the best food he’d had since he’d last been to the Manor, but it still felt like sawdust in his mouth. He could feel Alfred and Bruce’s gazes on him, so he made himself finish the half portion he’d served himself before asking to be excused.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Bruce ended the call with Zatanna, sighing heavily. It was no secret that he found magic distasteful, preferred it when it was as far away from Gotham as possible. And now that someone had cursed Dick, he hated it even more.</p><p>The solution Zatanna gave him was simple. He had to destroy the book that had been used to curse Dick, along with the altar the magician was using to draw magic from. And that amount of energy, Zatanna had said, would definitely register on a map.</p><p>So it was simple, really. Bruce just had to convince the map of that.</p><p>Alfred placed a bottle of water by the keyboard, tapping his shoulder so he’d lean back in his chair and fix his posture. “Any news?” he asked.</p><p>Bruce grunted. “Whoever cursed him is drawing power from a series of altars. We have to destroy them and the book that was used, and Dick will be free.”</p><p>“I see,” Alfred said.</p><p>“Where’s he now?”</p><p>“Assisting Master Damian with homework, from the other side of the room.” Alfred’s mouth was downturned; he liked this situation about as much as Bruce did.</p><p>Bruce made a noise of acknowledgement. “Zatanna suggested a few things that might…<em>reduce</em> the effects of the curse.”</p><p>Alfred raised an eyebrow as he waved around a feather duster. “Oh?”</p><p>“Dick told me he’d already tried bathing in saltwater, with no effect. Next on the list is this.” He handed Alfred a sheet of paper with notes scribbled over it. It was a recipe for some sort of raw meat thing that would apparently ‘soak in all the negative energy and hopefully purge the soul’.</p><p>Alfred frowned at it. “Are you sure you didn’t miss a step or two, Master Bruce?” he said.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because this requires consuming raw goat liver.”</p><p>Bruce sighed. “Yes.”</p><p>“I see.” Alfred folded it and tucked it into a pocket. “I will go about ordering the ingredients at once.”</p><p>“Thanks, Alfred.” Bruce hoped Damian never found out about this. For now, he had his work cut out for him trying to find these magic wielders.</p><p>From the first half of the recording taken from Dick’s mask, Bruce understood that the group dabbling in dark magic and killing all these people had been kidnapped by the Elite, a group of upper middle-class cultists who dabbled in blood magic. Bruce had seen them once before, but they were apparently back again.</p><p>There was a connection between the drugs going around Gotham (and Bludhaven) and the dropping bodies of the cult. They just needed to track down where the shipments had originated from, and maybe then they would have answers.</p><p>“B?” Dick said. “Find anything useful?”</p><p>He was rubbing at his arm absentmindedly, standing five metres away from Bruce. Bruce noted it but didn’t bring it up. “This is everything we know about the newest batch of flakka,” he said, sliding over a stack of files from the coroner’s office as well as results of tests he’d run himself. “Tim drew up a map of all the current suppliers.”</p><p>Dick let out a low whistle at the red dots scattered all over the map. He’d shuffled over to grab the files, and then moved as far from Bruce as he could get while still having a decent view of the screen. It was unnerving, to say the least – Dick had never been shy about showing affection physically.</p><p>“That’s…hang on, isn’t that <em>all </em>the suppliers we know about?”</p><p>Bruce nodded grimly. “Which means that we may find answers in the dockyard.”</p><p>Dick nodded, about to leave to get his suit.</p><p>“You’re benched, Dick. You’re more of a liability out on the field if mere contact with your skin can kill,” Bruce said. Dick’s face spasmed at the words, but Bruce continued, “This is a simple recon mission. I’ll take Tim, and Jason and the girls can go out on patrol.”</p><p>Dick let out a huff, giving in far easier than Bruce had anticipated. “Fine,” he said. “But if anything goes wrong and you need backup, I won’t stay back.”</p><p>Bruce only nodded.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The dockyards were dark and gloomy, they smelled fishy, and there was a much higher chance of getting water in his boots than Tim liked. To make matters worse, there was absolutely <em>nothing</em> happening.</p><p>Tim let out a huff, slumping back against the wall he and Bruce were perched in front of. They had a decent view of the entire yard from here, but if nothing moved in the next ten minutes, Tim was going to suggest they get down there and actually scout around.</p><p>“Patience,” Bruce rumbled. “You’ve stuck out through worse stake-outs than this.”</p><p>Tim sighed. “I just want to fix this,” he said. “Dick looks…<em>weird</em>.”</p><p>“The face paint <em>is</em> a little off-putting,” Bruce said, deliberately moving away from the subject of Dick’s jumpiness, the dark circles under his eyes, how he would sometimes rub his skin to the point where it went red and threatened to peel. Before Tim could say anything, he stood up. “C’mon. Place is quiet tonight.”</p><p>It set off something nostalgic in Tim’s stomach to be back on the streets with just Bruce. He’d <em>missed</em> this. Bruce was different when he was patrolling. The cape had a weight, and a significant one at that, but there was something equally as heavy in being Bruce Wayne that he shed when he put on the cowl.</p><p>He never shed Batman.</p><p>It’d been Tim’s job, once upon a time, to make sure that Bruce didn’t bow down before the gritty mud of Gotham. It wasn’t anymore, not like it used to be, but he was still Bruce’s son. He still cared.</p><p>Tim followed Batman’s lead silently, keeping to the shadows despite the fact that not a single soul had been spotted moving around here.</p><p>Bruce indicated towards the containers on the left as he moved to the right, and Tim took off, working his way through the empty boxes. They’d stopped the last shipment, so the deadly flakka must’ve been hanging around Gotham for two to three weeks, or even longer. That is, if they hadn’t brought it into the city by other means. It wasn’t common, not by a long shot, but there had been cases.</p><p>Tim had honestly forgotten how big the yard was. He hadn’t been here in a while, too caught up with his side of Gotham. He poked his head through each container as he passed it. There wasn’t even much left to note: a few scrapes against the walls and flooring, a cigarette butt or two here and there. Tim diligently filed away each piece of evidence he found on the off chance that it became useful when they went in for the night.</p><p>“Ro—Red Robin,” Batman’s voice came through the comms. “Container 92.” There were grunts and <em>thwack</em> noises in the background.</p><p>“Understood,” Tim said, revelling at the chance to finally do something.</p><p>He leapt from container to container, keeping count in his head. It’d been a training exercise when he was Robin, to locate the exact container box that Batman wanted purely from memory of the map he would show Tim before they headed out. Tim had always aced that one. Memory he had few issues with.</p><p>Bruce was fighting off three goons when Tim got to the right one. He didn’t jump down to pitch in; there was a reason Bruce hadn’t asked for backup, like he normally would. There had to be something about container 92.</p><p>Two more men came rushing out of 87. Batman threw a batarang at one of their legs, and they fell to the concrete floor with a thump. The other one came at Bruce with a stupid amount of courage, and a solid fist that intended to deliver a mean right hook. Batman ducked, kicking out his legs from under him and aiming a hit at his stomach that forced the air out of his lungs.</p><p>The entrance to container 92 was wide open, but dark as hell. It was also directly behind the fight.</p><p>“I’m going in,” Tim said quietly, creeping around behind them.</p><p>Bruce grunted in response, and Tim knew he would do his best to keep their attention. The role reversal felt <em>very </em>strange. He was lucky that Damian wasn’t in the Cave tonight, or he’d have hell to pay.</p><p>There was nothing remarkable about the inside of a shipping container. It was dark and drafty, and smelled faintly of sea water. Tim turned on one of his light sticks and sucked in a breath.</p><p>What he hadn’t been able to see before were the ritual props. On the floor of the container was a pentagram, drawn in blood. At each of its points stood a candle. They weren’t lit – Tim didn’t know why, but he could see that he’d be researching dark magic for the next few days. At the centre of the pentagram was what he assumed to be the altar; it fit Dick’s descriptions to a T.</p><p>Tim had little experience with magic like this, but he’d seen enough TV to know that there were things he absolutely shouldn’t do. There was no way he was giving Damian the satisfaction of his being killed off like the geeky virgin in a horror movie. So he didn’t give in to the urge to just scrape off bits of the pentagram, instead throwing a batarang at the bowl on the altar, knocking it over.</p><p>Bits of chicken bone fell out, as did a rotting hand and two dead frogs. A dark liquid, too dark to be blood, splattered. Tim grabbed one of the cannisters of gasoline – used for the yachts, typically – and dumped it around the container, making sure to douse the entire pentagram with all its creepy innards.</p><p>“Lighting the box up, B,” he said over the comms just before he flicked his lighter on, threw it in the centre of the pentagram, and ran out.</p><p>Fire caught immediately, blazing up and spreading through the box. Tim could feel the heat on his back as he raced towards where Bruce had just finished tying up the men. Their faces were pale as they stared at the flames, but there was nothing even close to <em>anger</em> that indicated they were mad that their secret demon summoning circle had just been destroyed.</p><p>Tim had a sinking feeling about the connection between drug dealing and black magic.</p><p>Bruce’s face confirmed Tim’s theory. “They don’t know anything,” he said. “They were told by a man in a ski mask and black coat that they would be paid well to guard the box. They didn’t even know what was inside.”</p><p>Tim grimaced. “I think the magic somehow…<em>contaminated</em> the flakka. Like if you have raw meat next to cooked food in a freezer.”</p><p>“You think it was accidental.” Bruce’s gaze was thoughtful. “I called emergency services; they’ll be here in another twenty seconds. We should go.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Thought I might find you here.” Cass said the sentence carefully, making sure her mouth was working around each syllable like it was supposed to.</p><p>Dick jumped from where he was sitting on the roof of the Manor, legs swinging. He was leaning against the parapet, grey hoodie and dark pants melting him into the shadows. If Cass hadn’t been looking for his still form, she might’ve glanced over him.</p><p>Cass hadn’t even known Dick <em>owned</em> a hoodie so colourless.</p><p>“Hey, Cassie,” Dick said, turning his face around with a small smile. There was a question on his face that Cass interpreted easily.</p><p><em>I wanted to see how you were</em>, she signed, and Dick’s tense shoulders eased.</p><p>Cass moved to sit beside him on the edge of the roof, and Dick edged away, despite having nowhere to go on his other side.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Cass said. She would’ve been amused, had it not been for how afraid he was.</p><p>She could understand that, being afraid that you might hurt people.</p><p>“Of course I worry,” Dick said in a huff of breath, staring out ahead into the wilderness that surrounded the Manor. “I’d be stupid not to. Careless.”</p><p>His breathing was even in a way that meant he was actively focusing on keeping it natural. Which meant it wasn’t natural.</p><p>So Cass began talking, signing to Dick so he had to focus on her hands. She told him about how Stephanie had downloaded Tinder during a sleepover, for kicks, and how they’d somehow stumbled across a paedophile on their very first night using the app. They’d posed as a fourteen year old girl, arranging to meet up with the guy that weekend. Then, when he’d been waiting in the park, they’d jumped and interrogated him as Spoiler and Batgirl, frightening him to the point where he swore off sex altogether.</p><p>Cass still checked up on him every now and then.</p><p>Dick let out a low chuckle. “So now you guys use Tinder to hunt down creeps in Gotham?”</p><p>Cass nodded. <em>And surrounding cities,</em> she added with a grin. <em>Bludhaven’s just as bad.</em></p><p>“Yup,” Dick popped the P, “that’s the Haven for ya.” He moved his arm – the one between him and Cass – up to ruffle her hair absentmindedly. Dick got about ten centimetres away before Cass moved out of his reach.</p><p>Dick’s hand froze, face losing all colour. His lips were bloodless as he sat rooted to the spot.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Cass tried to reassure him. “I moved.”</p><p><em>What if you hadn’t</em>, was what was flashing through Dick’s head. It was projected loudly across his face, as loud as a shout or scream. <em>I could’ve killed you</em>.</p><p>“Go,” Dick whispered. “Please.”</p><p>Cass didn’t want to leave him, not when he was like this, but her presence probably wouldn’t help matters. She didn’t try touching him, didn’t squeeze his shoulder like she wanted to.</p><p>“Dinner is in half an hour,” she told him. “Alfred wants you there.”</p><p>Dick had been skipping meals more often than not, eating when no one was in the dining room or kitchen, or bringing snacks to his room. It’d been tolerable the first week or so, but now it had been a month.</p><p>“I’ll be there,” Dick told her, in that same barely there voice. “Just… I can’t risk touching any of you.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It took another three weeks for the Batcomputer to pick up on the residual energy that black magic gave off. <em>It’s bad mojo, </em>Zatanna had said, <em>if you align your sensors to its frequency, it’ll pop up like Christmas lights.</em></p><p>Bruce half wished they’d left the altar at the dockyard alone, to get more readings off of it. It might’ve taken less time to find the remaining altars.</p><p>It might’ve also meant that Dick would be going a little less stir crazy. He would work out in the Cave during the dawn shifts, when everyone had just gotten back from patrol and headed to bed. According to Alfred, he didn’t sleep much; his ever-darkening under-eyes also attested to this.</p><p>Bruce had, a few days ago, passed him in the hall after Dick had come out of the shower, resulting in not only a full body flinch as Dick tried to melt against the wall, but also showed Bruce the bright red skin of someone who had been bathing in water that was bordering on much too hot for the human body to tolerate.</p><p>Bruce hadn’t <em>really</em> given much thought to how much of a tactile person his son was, but it was becoming startlingly clear that, with about a month of not touching a single living soul, Dick was going slightly crazy in a very real way.</p><p>Cass had bought him an electric blanket that was also weighted. Bruce would see Dick wrapped in it when he passed by his door, case files and laptop spread out before him. Then there were signs of stress; Dick got antsy about things, but it didn’t stay that way – he always worked off the jumpiness one way or another. But now, the combination of being forced to stay away from other people and the pressing concern of a death touch meant that he was always tense, always jittery.</p><p>It was some amalgamation of all of these that probably led to Bruce finally agreeing for Dick to go out with him and Jason at night to destroy altar number three. The more confirmed readings they got, and the closer they were to the site, the better the software became at locating the rest.</p><p>This one was, unsurprisingly, at an abandoned warehouse. Bruce sent Jason and Dick in opposite directions while he took to the farther end of the site. Each had a device that would pick up on all the energy coming from the warehouse and send it directly to the Batcomputer, where Tim was currently on duty.</p><p>He hadn’t expected much from this place, to be honest. The readings were loud, but they weren’t quite the same as the energy output from the dockyard and first altar had been. Which was probably why Bruce was caught off guard when gas streamed out of the vents on either side of him.</p><p>Bruce yanked on his gas mask, holding his breath, but by then it was already too late. His eyes were closing.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Jason was dragged from a comfortable blanket of darkness by the worst thing he could imagine waking up to: the sound of Batman’s voice.</p><p>“Hood,” it growled.</p><p>Jason opened his eyes a fraction, blinking into the dim light. He could see his breath. “Shit,” he muttered.</p><p>Bruce was crouched beside him, one hand cuffed to the wall. The other was probing at a cut on Jason’s upper arm, from a blade that had shredded his <em>fifth </em>jacket <em>this month</em>. Jason was going to rob these guys blind, because <em>good quality leather jackets didn’t come cheap, fuckers.</em></p><p>“I’m up, I’m up,” Jason grumbled, trying to get his feet under him. He was probably still feeling the effects of that gas, because it took his wrist yanking him back to the ground to realise he was also stuck to the wall.</p><p>And then Jason was wide awake. “Where’s N?” he asked, looking around.</p><p>Bruce’s mouth tightened, and he jerked his head to the other side of the tiny freezer they were apparently stuck in. Dick was still slumped against the wall, a tiny line of red crawling down the side of his face. Head wound, then.</p><p>Jason forced himself to begin cataloguing, like he’d been trained to do. First: most of his suit was gone, as was his helmet. He was currently in his boxers, a T-shirt, and his domino mask - they’d tried removing that as well but the shock mechanism had stopped them. He had no weaponry on him, which was a terrible oversight and one that Jason would have to fix immediately when they got out of this mess.</p><p>Second: it was <em>freezing</em>. He hadn’t noticed it until now, but Jason’s teeth were chattering, and the tips of his fingers were going numb. He shoved his free hand under his armpit and tucked his other one between his thighs. There were goosebumps all over him, and he could see his toes already blue.</p><p>Third: Bruce and Dick had also been stripped methodically. Bruce was currently in just the lower half of the Batsuit (minus his boots and belt) and his cape and cowl. His gloves were gone. Dick’s was in the domino mask he’d taken to wearing under his Target helmet, and boxers. The state of his suit was worse than either of theirs - it’d apparently been slashed experimentally because there were still bits of fabric around his wrist, ankles, and torso.</p><p>“Got,” Jason coughed, clearing his throat, “got any ideas?”</p><p>Bruce grunted, focused on trying to pick the lock without a lock pick. Despite having been stripped less than either of them, he had no weaponry on him that was proving useful at the moment.</p><p>“They have no interest in us,” Bruce said, “beyond the fact that we’re a hindrance.” He gave the chains one last tug before releasing them with an irritated huff of breath.</p><p>“Cameras?” Jason asked. He ignored the fact that this was probably the longest he’d spent more or less alone with Bruce in a long time. He ignored how easy it was to slip into his role of Bruce’s partner.</p><p>“Visual but no audio,” Bruce said. “But we can’t be a hundred percent certain.” <em>So stick to code names, and no spilling trade secrets</em>, went unsaid.</p><p>Dick was beginning to stir. His eyes fluttered, and he let out a low groan, hand lifting up towards his head before his eyes flew open.</p><p>Jason could practically see the same training methods flitting through Dick’s brain as he sat up and took in the situation.</p><p>“Hey,” he said. “Fancy seeing you guys here.” His teeth were chattering violently. Then he glanced down at his bare body and his face turned pale, blood leaving it in an instant. “Hope they were wearing gloves,” he said, voice shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.</p><p>Bruce grunted, eyeing him. The instant he moved closer, Dick shuffled back with a ferocity Jason didn’t realise he had.</p><p>Bruce sighed. “I need to check if you have a concussion,” he said. He ducked his head, pretending to stifle a yawn as he said, “I’ve sent out the distress beacon. Backup should be arriving soon.”</p><p>“So, hang tight till then?” Jason said. Tim better hurry up, because being trapped in a literal box with Bruce and Dick? He almost preferred death. And with the lack of clothing, there was a chance they would all very literally freeze. Especially because there was no way to huddle with Dick. Jason wasn't even near enough to <em>reach</em> him.</p><p>“Nightwing,” Bruce growled, in his <em>this is serious and you’re going to follow my orders</em> voice. His swung his cape around and wrapped his fingers in it.</p><p>“These guys are gonna think N’s a fucking germaphobe,” Jason murmured. He couldn’t feel his face anymore. The tip of his nose was an ice cube.</p><p>Dick shot him a glare before Bruce’s grunt of impatience brought his eyes back to Bruce’s finger.</p><p>“Yes, there’s one,” Dick said tiredly.</p><p>Jason zoned out of the concussion test until there was movement. Bruce took off his cape, draping it over Dick’s shivering form.</p><p>“No,” Dick protested groggily. “You’re gonna get frozen.”</p><p>“Hood and I both have more body mass than you do, and clothes,” Bruce informed him. “Your suit is also less insulated in normal situations—”</p><p>“Not my fault the winter one is so stiff,” Dick murmured.</p><p>“Hey, eyes open. That goes for both of you,” Bruce added, with a sharp glance towards Jason, who hadn’t even realised his eyes were drifting shut. “And it wouldn’t be stiff if you wore it in.”</p><p>Bruce plopped down next to Jason, who looked at him in unconcealed horror as he pressed against him.</p><p>“Dude,” Jason said, moving away, but Bruce tugged him back, making sure their bodies were touching as much as possible.</p><p>“We need to stay warm,” Bruce rumbled. His head was ducked down and voice low as he spoke; Jason had to strain to hear him. “They won’t be able to carry all of us out.”</p><p>“Didn’t realise N’s cooties came with no cuddling benefits.”</p><p>Dick huffed. “Yeah, keep saying that while I freeze my ass off over here.”</p><p>His words were beginning to slur. “Nightwing,” Bruce said. “Recite the periodic table.”</p><p>“The song version?”</p><p>“God no,” Jason said. “Bad enough being stuck here with you two, but if I have to hear that godawful song I’ll gouge my ears out. With an ice pick.”</p><p>Dick smirked. <em>“There’s hydrogen and helium, and lithium, beryllium. Boron, carbon everywhere, nitrogen all through the air…”</em></p><p>“I hate you,” Jason said to Bruce. Bruce huffed a laugh; it came out in a white cloud.</p><p>Jason wriggled his toes. He hadn’t been able to feel them in a long time, but seeing the faint movement in his feet reassured him that they were still doing okay. He didn’t know how long they’d been there for – his best guess was over an hour, not counting the time they’d been unconscious. There was no way to tell time in this freezer.</p><p>Bruce would nudge him from time to time, jerking him back awake. He could feel Bruce’s hand rubbing at his shoulder, the wounded one pressed between their bodies.</p><p>“Replacement’s taking his fucking time,” Jason mumbled, voice barely audible.</p><p>Bruce let out a <em>hmm</em>, and the rubbing increased in speed.</p><p>Dick stopped singing before he got to barium, and no amount of shouting or shaking roused him beyond a few blinks. Bruce was seemingly satisfied with even that little reaction, until he stopped reacting altogether.</p><p>Bruce jumped up, crawling to where Dick was slumped.</p><p>“Careful, B,” Jason said. He hoped he said it aloud, at least. “He’d never forgive you or himself if you, <em>y’know</em>. Use m’ shirt to cover y’r hand, a’ least.”</p><p>Bruce let out a low curse, hands on Dick’s shoulders over the cape, slaps to his face. There was a battle raging on his face, one that Jason, even after being out of practise for so long, could easily read.</p><p>He couldn’t feel Dick’s breaths without moving his hand close enough to his skin that he would certainly come into contact with it. The cape was too thick for him to feel for Dick’s pulse through, not that it stopped him from trying. It was hard rubbing someone’s body with one hand - the other was still chained to the wall - but Bruce did his best.</p><p>His jaw was clenched tightly, and Jason suddenly couldn’t even begin to comprehend how it felt to sit there, unable to do anything, as your kid potentially froze to death before you.</p><p>Bruce tugged the cape tighter around Dick, rubbing him harshly. He’d just turned to check on Jason when there was a sharp rap on the door.</p><p>“B? You guys in there?” It was Steph’s voice.</p><p>Jason felt the overwhelming sensation of relief as he struggled to sit upright. “Spoiler,” he tried to say through frozen lips and vocal cords.</p><p>Bruce knocked against the door. “We’re here, Spoiler,” he said. The tight coil of his shoulders relaxed a fraction.</p><p>On the other side, Steph let out a weary whoop as she opened the lock on the door. “Batgirl’s taking care of the thugs who kidnapped you,” she was saying. Bruce, even in his state, could tell she was favouring one side. Wherever she and the others had been, they’d come out of it fighting.</p><p>The door swung open, and Damian leapt in, taking in the scene. He automatically turned to where Dick was, mouth going a little slack at seeing his unconscious form before he fixed his composure and walked into the freezer.</p><p>“Unlock B first,” Jason mumbled when Damian came to him.</p><p>The kid clucked in irritation. “Of course, Hood.”</p><p>The freezer was too small for more people to come inside. The second Damian freed Bruce, he shot out as fast as his hypothermic body could to make space for Spoiler, the only one there (apart from Batgirl) who had their whole body covered and would be safest to deal with Dick. Whatever injuries they all had could be dealt with outside the freezer.</p><p>Damian unlocked Jason next, tossing him his gloves and jacket. Jason stumbled slightly, the only thing keeping him upright and moving being pure stubbornness. He bordered on Bruce’s body mass – the younger ones wouldn’t be much help if he lost consciousness, and Bruce would probably be carrying Dick when he got his suit back.</p><p>Tim came up to Jason with his suit - or rather, what was left of it. There were knife slashes all over the place. Jason let out a growl and put on the jacket, forgoing everything else. The Batmobile was warm; he'd make Tim ride his bike back to the Cave.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Alfred diagnosed the three of them with cases of mild hypothermia, even Dick’s. He tended to the deep gash in Steph’s side, humming in approval when he removed the makeshift bandage she’d wrapped it with. Tim had a concussion and bruised ribs, and Damian had apparently been sporting a sprained ankle the entire time that he hadn’t told anyone about. Cass came out of surprisingly unscathed, with only a few slashes from a knife that got through her suit.</p><p>Tim and Stephanie curled around Jason as he finally let himself sleep, under a blanket in the living room. The fire roared before Bruce as he typed away on a laptop, Damian under one arm with Titus’ head in his lap and Cass under the other. The laptop had been a compromise by Alfred, whose stern look had reached a new high when Bruce tried to move to the Batcomputer after being checked over.</p><p>Dick had been placed closest to the fire, which also meant that the rest of them had to leave at least an armchair gap between him and them.</p><p>Bruce glanced up every five seconds to make sure he was breathing, that he wasn’t overheating, that the blankets tucked around him weren’t covering his nose. This curse had started out as a nuisance, but now it was bordering on excruciating; Bruce couldn’t even check his temperature without a thermometer and two layers of latex gloves.</p><p>He woke up Damian every hour, letting him doze off in between check-ins. As the night left and daylight started to emerge, the two hands he used on the laptop became one, as he alternated between resting it on the children he had on either side of him.</p><p>Tim suddenly raised his head. “Forgot to mention,” he said, making Bruce startle; wasn't Tim supposed to be <em>sleeping?</em> “We got another altar.”</p><p>Bruce’s fingers paused. “You <em>forgot</em> that you destroyed an altar?” Where had this explanation been when he’d asked them what they’d done all night? He was never letting them sleep without doing their reports again.</p><p>Cass shifted beside him, letting in cold air as the blanket lifted a little. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “Thought Tim told you.”</p><p>Tim huffed. “I thought Damian would’ve mentioned it for sure.”</p><p>Bruce glanced skyward before turning to his son on the couch he was leaning against. “Good job,” he said. “But don’t do it again.”</p><p>He couldn’t berate them for going there, because he hadn’t told them they <em>couldn’t</em>, because he hadn’t thought (firstly) that another altar would pop up quite so soon, or that (secondly) they’d be reckless enough to go there without telling him. He wouldn’t be making that mistake again either.</p><p>This meant that there was probably only one altar left – the positioning of it on the map indicated that the altars symbolised the five points of a pentagram. There were probably links between them that they couldn’t pick up on that drew the pentagram’s star and circular border.</p><p>According to Blood, any magic used now would be going haywire – there was no longer a secure anchor point for them to draw magic out through. The <em>voltage</em> of the magic would also be a point of concern; it could spike or drop at any given moment. No one knew how this might affect the batches of flakka that had been contaminated.</p><p>There were two things to do now: keep track of the remaining three members of the Elite, the cult group that was being targeted and systematically killed, and destroy all the flakka. Bruce had suspicions that the withdrawal of magic from the drugs would ruin the chemical makeup to the point it could no longer hold – in other words, destroying the last altar could potentially destroy the flakka infected with dark magic, taking care of that problem. He’d stored samples of flakka to test this theory.</p><p>Bruce didn’t know how long he sat there, toasty and warm with the soft breaths of his kids around him, working on the case. He probably dozed off a few times during, because at one point he blinked at the screen to find a whole text file of the letter H.</p><p>That got deleted immediately.</p><p>He stretched a little, checking on the scans of Gotham and its surrounding areas for any magical activity related to the case, when he saw movement on the couch in front of him.</p><p>Dick shifted around, wrestling to free his arm from where it was trapped snugly in the blankets. Then he froze, eyes shooting open and darting around the room.</p><p>“Dick,” Bruce said softly.</p><p>Dick turned to the sound of his voice immediately, trained to react almost before something had even happened. Bruce could tell he still wasn’t fully awake – there was a hint of confusion still on his face.</p><p>“We were in there for a few hours. The others got us out. Everyone’s fine. Go back to sleep.” He said this all in a calm, even voice, maintaining reassuring eye contact with Dick.</p><p>Dick sat up abruptly. “I—my suit was—” His breathing was beginning to grow rapid.</p><p>Bruce knew what he was asking. “They wore gloves. No one died.”</p><p>Dick visibly relaxed, rubbing his face with his hands.</p><p>“Hey,” Bruce said, to get Dick’s attention, and hopefully pull his mind away from awful places it could go. “Tim and the others destroyed the fourth altar.”</p><p>“Yeah?” There was naked hope in Dick’s voice.</p><p>That was when he looked around the living room, as though seeing it for the first time since waking up. Bruce watched his face as Dick’s eyes trailed over the huddled, sleeping forms of his siblings, over the two using Bruce as a pillow. There was a flash of absolute longing as he watched them, before Dick wiped it clean with a swipe of his hand over his face.</p><p>He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The other one rubbed his arm, like Bruce had watched him do for the last couple of months. It looked hard enough to leave red marks on his skin. Bruce had never wanted to pull him into a hug more.</p><p>“I’m going to head to bed,” Dick said in a quiet voice. He got up, taking the blanket with him.</p><p>“You can stay,” Bruce said. “You aren’t a danger to anyone here.”</p><p>Dick gave a strange half smile, strained and fake. “The cat might try to sit on my face,” he said, in a tone that tried to come off as a joke.</p><p>Dick had almost exited the room when Bruce said, “We’ll fix this, Dick. We’re almost there.” He couldn’t remember the last time <em>he’d</em> been the one to provide hope and encouragement, especially to <em>Dick</em>. For as long as he could remember, Dick had been that pillar for him.</p><p>His son paused at the doorway, before continuing.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“You should let Dick come out on patrol tonight,” Jason announced a week later, walking into the Batcave.</p><p>Judging by the set look on Bruce’s face, Bruce had been expecting him. “You know why I can’t do that.”</p><p>“He’s going stir crazy here. It’s been three months!” Jason argued. “Have you <em>seen</em> his arms? How he looks when he gets out of a shower? Or his <em>nails?</em>”</p><p>Bruce frowned. “What’s wrong with his nails?” he asked sharply, meaning that he’d picked up on the rubbing thing Dick did, and the insanely hot showers he’d been taking.</p><p>“He’s doing that head clawing shit he does when he gets stressed, only <em>all the damn time</em>.” And frankly, it was a little concerning to see Dick pulling out tufts of hair, nails sometimes coming up red when he scratched his head too deep.</p><p>Bruce’s jaw was set. He’d mellowed somewhat since his screaming match with Dick, over what was essentially nothing – Jason had no idea how it’d started, but when he’d come into the Cave, Dick had been on a spiel about Bruce’s robotic emotions and tendency to hide critical information. It’d given him a vivid sense of déjà vu, right back to his Robin years. He couldn’t remember the last time Dick had gotten so riled up over absolutely nothing. He didn'd even know what had set him off.</p><p>“You saw what happened last time he went out,” Bruce said. “We can’t risk him getting too heavily injured, and we can’t risk him accidentally killing them.”</p><p>“He’s more covered than a fucking astronaut,” Jason countered, crossing his arms. “And last time was a mission. This is just patrol. We’ll stick to the quieter routes.”</p><p>“We?” Bruce raised an eyebrow.</p><p>Jason shrugged. “I don’t need your permission, and technically, neither does Dick.” The <em>we’ll sneak out if you say no and you can't stop us</em> went silently acknowledged between them.</p><p>Bruce’s stare was piercing. “Fine,” he ground out. “But only for a few hours. If your comms go off for even five minutes, I’ll be there.”</p><p>Jason let out a whoop, drowning out his words.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’d been three months since Dick had felt so refreshingly like <em>himself</em>. He and Jason dismounted from their bikes, and Dick tried to wipe off the giant grin that threatened to eat his face whole. He could feel Jason eyeing him when he took off the helmet, feeling hot now that they were in the Cave, and tried to reduce the giddiness coursing through his body.</p><p>It’d been a rough few months, but maybe now things would get better. They were a single altar away from Dick finally being free.</p><p>He daydreamed about it sometimes, what he was going to do first when he lost this curse. He imagined how it would feel to finally be able to hug someone again, to be able to squeeze Damian and kiss Tim’s cheeks like he used to do. There were times when the craving overwhelmed him, that need to just brush his shoulder against someone else’s; that was when he took steaming hot showers in water that was nearer to boiling temperatures than not, anything to make him feel slightly more at home in his skin than he did.</p><p>“I bet Alfred has hot chocolate upstairs,” Dick said in an effort to convince Jason to stay the night. He’d already been hanging around the Manor more than usual, pitching in with the case. Bruce had gotten him to give detailed reports on all the drug dealers he knew about, the kids on the street who knew about weird activity.</p><p>Jason had accused him of stealing off of Sherlock Holmes.</p><p>He chewed the inside of his mouth now, clearly contemplating the pros and cons, cons mainly being <em>Bruce</em>.</p><p>Dick sweetened the deal. “Cass convinced him to bake tomorrow morning.”</p><p>Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t leave you lot to get fat off Alfred’s cooking,” he said with a look in his eyes that said he clearly knew what Dick was doing.</p><p>Dick knew that the others had hung around so much because he’d been acting so pathetically <em>off</em>. That needed to change. He was a grown up, for god’s sake. He had to have better self-control than that. So what if he hadn’t gotten a hug in a while? A lot of people lived <em>years</em> without hugs (read: Bruce) and came out okay.</p><p>Dick was going to stop moping. He was no use to them like this. And it was going to start from tonight.</p><p>Alfred indeed had prepared hot chocolate. Tim was slumped forward on a barstool, clearly asleep.</p><p>Dick winced in sympathy for Tim’s still healing ribs, about to step forward to carry him to bed, before he remembered again. He swallowed down the black cloud that threatened to overwhelm him, <em>(he couldn’t even do </em>this<em>, couldn’t even carry his little brother to </em>bed<em>)</em>, and turned to Jason.</p><p>Jason was already there at Tim’s side, prodding his shoulder a little to see if he’d wake. He’d probably anticipated Dick’s internal dilemma and had tried to remove the object of it.</p><p>At Dick’s glance, he said, “What? If he’s still mostly awake, I’m not carting his heavy ass upstairs.”</p><p>Dick snorted. “Tim’s light as a feather. I think you need to do more weightlifting.”</p><p>Jason had apparently decided that a bridal hold was easier. “Take a photo,” he hissed.</p><p>Dick complied, sending it to everyone from Barbara to Alfred to Steph. Everyone except Damian, really. Their relationship may have been improving, but he wouldn’t hesitate to lord this over the older boy’s head.</p><p>“Hold on, I’ll bring two mugs up,” Dick said suddenly, unwilling to be alone in the kitchen. If he sat there his mind would go into all the nooks and crevices he didn’t want it to go, and he’d probably end up going back up to the roof like a teenage vampire.</p><p>Jason raised an eyebrow from where he was standing at the door but said nothing. Dick hated that they were all starting to tiptoe around him ever since that fight he’d gotten into with Bruce – the first one about a month and a half ago, not the one that had prompted Jason to take him out on patrol. He wanted to tell them that it wasn’t them he sometimes snapped at, that there was a crawling under his skin that felt an awful lot like cockroach feet, and it would scurry over his body until he had to do <em>something</em>.</p><p>He’d have to make it up to them for putting up with him and his terrible temper when this was over.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“I think,” Tim said one day about a week later, “that the last few Elites are going to be kidnapped.” Cass cocked her head, and Tim continued, “The three of them all had plugged toilets or sinks yesterday. They all had the same plumbing company come to fix it. I went in and snooped around after they’d left, and there were monitoring devices planted.”</p><p>Bruce hummed thoughtfully.</p><p>Tim took it as sign to continue. “Jason tried tracking the dealers, but they vanished. Like, literally disappeared right in front of him.”</p><p>“Magic,” Bruce growled, clearly frustrated. “Two of us will have to be watching them at all times.”</p><p>“Wait,” Dick said. “We’re letting them get kidnapped?”</p><p>“No,” Bruce said with reluctance. “Our priority right now is making sure the Elite aren’t killed. Then finding the altar and destroying it.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Bruce, in a classic Bruce move, assigned himself the longer and more kidnap-prone times for stakeout. He would’ve left Dick out of the roster altogether if Dick hadn’t vehemently argued against it – there were three of them, and even going out alone left them shorthanded.   </p><p>As it was, things weren’t terribly interesting. They didn’t spend their time doing anything particularly out of the ordinary, although the woman Jason and Dick had been watching one afternoon – Miranda Hilde – kept a store of her own blood in vials. She also wore a wig over shortly cropped hair.</p><p>Things went wrong on the third day of stakeout.</p><p>It was night, and the first signs of things going amiss was Tim not responding. Cass was sent to his location, the others (Bruce and Jason on watch) on high alert.</p><p>“He’s down,” Cass reported. “Knocked out cold. Happened soon.”</p><p>“Spoiler, head to their location and retrieve Red Robin. Batgirl, track them. If everything goes accordingly, we should all end up in the same place.”</p><p>It was at this moment that Dick, who had been watching with Jason, realised he probably should’ve told Bruce he was out tonight. Jason was giving him a look, one that said <em>I won’t rat you out, but fucking fess-up </em>now<em>,</em> but Dick kept his mouth shut.</p><p>Jason was receiving the brunt of Dick’s mulishness these days.</p><p>“You’re a good brother, you know that?” Dick said absentmindedly. He zoomed in further with the binoculars, leaning forward a little.</p><p>“What,” Jason said stonily.</p><p>Dick glanced at him, almost flinching at the glare. “I mean it,” he said. “I know I’ve been…”</p><p>“You’ve been a downright asshole, but fuck you,” Jason said hotly. “You say it like it’s some sort of surprise, like I’m doing something I’m not meant to be, like despite all your preaching about family and shit, I’m still some honorary member—”</p><p>“Jay, shut up for a second,” Dick said. “What I’m trying to say is, I would’ve probably clawed my brain out by this point if it hadn’t been for you. The others, yeah, but <em>especially</em> you. I’d say the same thing to them – hell, I’ve <em>said</em> the same thing to Tim.”</p><p>Jason shushed him. Dick opened his mouth, but closed it again at the wave of Jason’s hand.</p><p>The man they were currently watching – Brenner – was gone.</p><p>Dick muttered a curse as he and Jason leapt in through the window in front of them. Almost immediately, they were floundering ankle deep in quicksand.</p><p>“What sort of fuckery…” Jason yelled, reaching for the doorframe to yank himself upward while Dick wrapped his batarang around the curtain rod.</p><p>Like in the warehouse before, the quicksand disappeared when they got out. It’d apparently been a measure taken to slow them down, hastily placed, because there were no other booby traps as they searched through the apartment.</p><p>“O,” Dick said, “can you trace Brenner’s phone?”</p><p>“Already there, Boy Wonder,” Barbara replied. “Move East. I’ll guide you.”</p><p>“Y’know, maybe this should’ve been the plan,” Jason commented as they raced down the road, Dick holding onto Jason’s waist.</p><p>“What, letting them get taken?”</p><p>“Yeah. I’m not saying it’s good they’re in danger, all that crap, but you gotta admit, this is the quickest way to get to their lair.”</p><p>Dick didn’t respond. His comms were crackling to life.</p><p>“Nightwing,” Bruce said. “I need you at—”</p><p>“I’m with Jason,” Dick said.</p><p>There was a millisecond of silence, before Bruce said, “Wait outside the south entrance when you arrive for my signal.”</p><p>“Understood.”</p><p>"Think he's pissed?" Dick asked.</p><p>Jason snorted. "He's always pissed."</p><p>They pulled up in front of one of the thousands of shady warehouses Gotham had to offer. Jason killed the engine.</p><p>“We’re at the south entrance,” Jason said over the comms.</p><p>“In position,” Cass said. She and Damian were at the north entrance, while Bruce would be crashing in through the roof, as a way of distracting the cultists while the rest of them crept in through the sides.</p><p>“Acknowledged,” Batman said. “Entering now.”</p><p>There was a loud smash – <em>Bruce breaking through the roof </em>– and the sound of screams – <em>the hostages, most likely</em> – and then they were running in.</p><p>Inside was <em>chaos</em>. Batman was fighting against two giant cobra snakes that were snapping at him with their massive teeth; Damian leapt forward to help him, stabbing the snake with his blade.</p><p>Cass was on a mission to destroy the altar. In her way was what appeared to be a jungle, vines appearing and disappearing at will, tornadoes sometimes trying to pick her up. Jason leapt forwardd to help her carve her way towards the centre of the warehouse, where the altar stood. It was showing signs of what Dick considered to be wear and tear, judging by videos taken from their cowl cameras. The candles were melting much faster than a candle normally should – there were stacks of unused candles on one side of the room. The lines were also looking washed out, as though they needed to be repainted after a certain amount of time.</p><p>Dick could see the back of a head on the upper floor. He ran up the staircase, flipping over a guy running at him and leaving him for Cass, who had just finished with her magician thug. This floor was more of a loft than another level. It had hay bales, which came in handy now to soak up the sheer amount of blood that was present.</p><p>A normal person probably would’ve gagged and upchucked their stomach. Dick, after all this experience, stopped to stare at the sight before him for a whole second.</p><p>One of the hostages was barely recognisable as having once been human. It had to be Wilder, the one Bruce had been watching. He now resembled beef stew. Bits and pieces of him were strewn all over the place, leaving the most putrid smell Dick had ever experienced. Bits of him were on everyone else, which was possibly the worse part.</p><p>The second hostage looked to have died by drowning – Hilde had water all over her front, as though she’d coughed it up, even though the rest of her was dry.</p><p>Brenner was gagged and tied to a post. His eyes were petrified as he stared at Dick, begging him to get him out of this place.</p><p>Dick took a second to process the scene before him before he was running to Brenner, undoing his gag first before working on the ropes around his hands and feet.</p><p>He’d just gotten the feet untied when he sensed someone coming up behind him, and without a second thought, ducked and rolled. Moments later, a sword slashed through the air right where he’d been.</p><p>The sword was attached to a ninja mannequin, as though someone had found a mannequin somewhere and decided to dress it up before using it on the field. The thing was, this was almost like… like an <em>adaptoid</em> from comics Dick used to read as a kid, robots that could shift to become whatever they needed to be in order to defeat their opponent.</p><p>“Run,” Dick shouted at Brenner, who was still struggling with the knots.</p><p>As Dick watched, the ninja grew spikes, pinwheeling around so Dick had nothing to do but try evading. Dick flipped over it, sticking out an escrima stick while he was airborne. Electrocution only seemed to make it mad, because the next move it pulled was yanking Dick out of the air with a spiked hand.</p><p>The spike sunk in through his heavily reinforced boot, and Dick let out a gasp of pain as it pierced through his skin. He kicked at it with his free leg, only for that to get trapped on the stomach spikes. The ninja grabbed him by the shoulders, tiny needs pricking Dick’s skin and ripping through his suit like it was silk.</p><p>All of a sudden, the ninja shifted away, taking with it scraps of Dick’s suit, all the way from his shoulders to his wrists. He must look quite a sight now, arms bleeding. Dick jumped up to follow it, now realising that the only way to defeat it was possibly through exploding it.</p><p>But Brenner was still here, pinned to a corner by the magic ninja.</p><p>“I’ll distract,” Dick told him. “You make a run for it when I say so, okay? You have to be as fast as you can. No looking back.” He hoped this thing didn't understand human languages.</p><p>Brenner nodded shakily.</p><p>“Oi, spells for brains,” Dick shouted. Over the comms, he heard Tim snort.</p><p>“Not your best, Goldie,” Jason said with a grunt. “Hang on, we’re almost to the altar.”</p><p>“It worked, though,” Dick said, flinging himself off the railing he’d been standing on and onto the body of the ninja. “Run!” he yelled at Brenner.</p><p>Brenner made a run for it, waddling from side to side as he rushed to the staircase directly opposite him. What he (and Dick) hadn’t counted on was that the ninja could remove its limbs.</p><p>A leg shot out, tripping up Brenner and causing him to go crashing over the railing. Dick leapt forward, catching him by the shoulder and wincing when he felt it dislocate. Brenner let out a pained yelp, thrashing ferociously.</p><p>Dick held onto the railing with his feet, bracketing them so he didn’t slip further, other arm grabbing Brenner by the wrist. The ground floor was much too far away to get him down without breaking a limb or two, but now he wouldn’t land on his head and die, at lea—</p><p>Brenner seized, and went limp.</p><p>Dick didn’t know what had happened at first. There was a distant ringing in his ear as he tried desperately to hold on to Brenner’s now still body while processing the scene before him.</p><p>Was it a late acting spell? Had he been pricked or something by the ninja? Had—</p><p>Dick’s suit was ripped.</p><p><em>Dick’s suit was ripped</em>.</p><p>Horror filled Dick and almost caused him to release his grip.</p><p>At that moment, arms came to lift Brenner over the railing, placing him on the floor with a grunt. Dick fell backwards on the straw strewn floor.</p><p>He couldn’t stop shaking.</p><p>Jason checked Brenner’s pulse, and Dick could tell, by the way he froze, that the man was dead.</p><p>Dick had killed him.</p><p>He knew, through the comms, that the altar had been destroyed – the ninja was now just a mannequin, albeit a weirdly spiked one at that. He knew that any minute now, Bruce and Cass and <em>Damian</em>, God, Damian, would all come up and see what he’d done.</p><p>Dick couldn’t breathe. He could barely make out what Jason was saying. He flinched back when Jason went to touch his shoulder.</p><p>Dick yanked off his comms. “Don’t follow me,” he got out. “Please, Jay, just…” He didn’t wait any longer, jumping out of the window and grappling down.</p><p>He didn’t have long before someone would come after him. He didn’t know whether Jason would be the one. He just knew he had to get away.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick didn’t remember stealing Jason’s bike and driving off. He was by the park, having left the bike by the road at some point and had walked until his feet were numb. The next thing he knew, he was sitting high in the branches of a tree, and…</p><p>And he had no idea what he was going to do now. Bruce might be lenient when it came to Jason, but that was because Jason had <em>changed</em>. He’d killed before but he’d stopped now. (And besides, that was <em>Jason</em>. Bruce would forgive Jason anything, anything to have Jason still in his life, to have back the son he’d lost.)</p><p>Bruce wouldn’t accept that Dick hadn’t meant to kill Brenner, because Dick was supposed to notice and be in control of things like ripped suits. He’d <em>known</em> his touch was lethal – why hadn’t he done better? Letting Brenner fall might’ve broken a few limbs, but he’d probably still be alive now.</p><p>He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for Dick.</p><p>Everything washed out and Dick could only hear the harsh inhalations of his own breath, sharp and inconsistent. The leaves soaked up any blood leaking out of him – it wouldn’t do to drip out a yellow brick road.</p><p>He’d felt absolutely nothing. No sense that something as big as taking someone’s life was happening. It’d been like with the cockroaches – had he not seen it with his own eyes, he could’ve walked away never knowing he just killed someone. That frightened him most of all, the fact that it had seemingly left no mark on his body.</p><p>He couldn’t go out in the streets now, preaching Batman’s code. Not when he’d broken it.</p><p>He was running, like a coward, away from the vengeance Bruce would no doubt rain upon him when he found Dick. If he was half the person he wanted to be, had <em>thought</em> himself to be, he would’ve surrendered, stayed there in that loft until Batman had come to collect him.</p><p>Surely Bruce wouldn’t put him in someplace like Arkham, where the crazy ones were, but he’d have to be turned in to the police. He’d killed someone, after all. That sort of thing didn’t get washed away, and <em>shouldn’t</em>. He believed in that.</p><p>Dick’s breathing was picking up speed again. He dug his hands into the rough branches of the tree, trying to focus. The sting of the cuts making contact with the tree made him focus.</p><p><em>He could never go home</em>, was the one thought that kept spinning through his head. Because all he wanted to do was crawl into his bed, in the Manor, close his eyes and sleep forever. He wanted the comfort of home, but that was never going to be a possibility again.</p><p>He had to turn himself in.</p><p><em>That</em> thought left a hollow pit in his stomach. Dick let it sit there, festering, as he watched the sun rise to midday. He’d been here for a <em>long </em>time – the warehouse last night had been over twelve hours ago. He could hear people walking around in the park below him, eating lunch. Carefree.</p><p>Dick’s stomach let out a gurgle, but he barely felt it. He leaned his head against a knob of the tree and closed his eyes. He couldn’t get down before night fell, anyway.</p><p>But sleep didn’t come. He watched the sun sink down and blinked as twilight passed over him and he finally had no choice but to move.</p><p>Or he could not, a small voice said. The case was over. He didn’t <em>have</em> to go back. He could just sit here and melt into the tree and just <em>die</em>—</p><p>“Dick?” A voice said softly.</p><p>Dick jumped violently, almost falling from the tree before he grabbed a wayward branch with his hand, regaining his balance.</p><p>“Clark,” he said numbly. “Did he send you?” Did Bruce think Dick was escaping? It hurt to think that Bruce didn’t trust him to turn himself in, but then again, Bruce had trusted that Dick wouldn’t kill, and look where that ended up. And <em>hadn’t</em> he been having second thoughts just now?</p><p>Clark floated down to settle on the branch beside Dick. Dick shuffled away instantly.</p><p>“Don’t,” he got out.</p><p>Instead of responding, Clark pulled out a little container with air holes in it. Inside was a living cockroach. Dick’s skin crawled at the sight of it, but he let Clark tip the bug onto his hand.</p><p>It didn’t die. It moved around, tiny legs moving over his skin until he placed it back in the box.</p><p>“First cockroach I haven’t killed,” he said with no inflection. “Wish I could say the same about Brenner. Bruce told you. He must have. He didn’t have to make you come out here to collect me. I was going to turn myself in anyway.”</p><p>“Dick,” Clark said gently, turning to him. “Brenner isn’t dead.”</p><p>Dick blinked. “What?”</p><p>“He’s not dead,” Clark repeated. He turned and placed a hand on Dick’s shoulder, and it took everything Dick had to not turn towards the first touch he’d felt in three months. “He’s in a coma, but they say he’ll most likely wake up. You did not kill him.”</p><p>“But,” Dick wet his lips, suddenly realising how dry his mouth was, “you’re here.”</p><p>“Bruce called me when the rest of them couldn’t find you. He’s been worried sick. They all are.” Clark held out an open palm in front of Dick, waiting for him to place his hand in it. “Are you ready to go back?”</p><p>“I—” Dick had no idea how to face them. He had no idea how to accept this open hand.</p><p>“It’s going to be okay,” Superman said, the same words he’d told Dick every time he’d lost his footing and gone running to Clark. “The worst is over now.”</p><p>Dick grabbed his hand, and circled the other around Clark in the tightest hug. He could feel the tears building in his chest, but if he broke down now it’d be hours before he could put himself back together.</p><p>When he opened his eyes again, they were floating in the air. Dick let out a sniff, and opened his eyes to look down at Gotham, trusting Clark’s hold on him as he loosened his own. The stinging in his body and the blood loss was finally registering.</p><p>Alfred was the only one in the Batcave when they landed. Clark flew them right to the medbay, and Alfred gave Dick a look that had him wilting.</p><p>“Sorry, Alf,” he said. “I…”</p><p>“It’s not your fault, Master Dick,” Alfred said, methodically cutting away pieces of his uniform.</p><p>Dick couldn’t apologise for his flight tendencies, because he knew that the man would never accept ‘I was going to come back to turn myself in’. Instead, he stayed quiet as Alfred wrapped his arms, stitching up the worst ones, and tended to the stab wound in his foot.</p><p>He shot upright at the sound of Bruce’s voice.</p><p>“Kal. Where—”</p><p>“He’s in here, Master Bruce,” Alfred called.</p><p>Bruce came into the medbay, cowl down but face a mask of its own. It smoothed out into relief when he saw Dick upright on the bed.</p><p>“Dick,” he exhaled, walking over to him.</p><p>The dam Dick had been holding tight within him broke as he let out a sob. Bruce looked absolutely flabbergasted at the sight of tears, but now, after so much experience with crying children, he didn’t run away anymore.</p><p>Instead, he sat down next to Dick and tugged in his head so it was tucked into the junction of Bruce’s shoulder. One hand reached down to rub his back. After a month of no touch, feeling skin on his bare back sent absolute shockwaves through Dick, and he sobbed harder.</p><p>Bruce was murmuring something to him as he carded his fingers through Dick’s hair, rubbed a hand down his back. When nothing seemed to slow down the tears, but finally tried pulling back to see Dick’s face, but Dick clung on to his neck and refused to let go.</p><p>“Dick, chum, you gotta give me something to work with here,” he said finally. His voice took Dick back to the Bruce who would let him sleep in his bed when Dick had nightmares; he hadn’t seen this Bruce in over a <em>decade</em>.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he gasped out. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”</p><p>“Hey, no,” Bruce said firmly. “Listen to me. You didn’t kill him. He isn’t dead. You have nothing to be sorry for.”</p><p>“I should’ve noticed where my suit was ripped. I should’ve realised I’d be touching his skin.” It was a wonder that Bruce could interpret his words at all, considering how wet Dick’s voice was. He sniffled in a manner that would horrify Alfred, hoping he hadn’t gotten any of his grosser bodily fluids onto Bruce.</p><p>Bruce’s arms clutched him tighter, and Dick soaked in how <em>good</em> it felt to just be held. “Don’t go down that road,” he said. “It leads nowhere good.”</p><p>Dick wanted to tell him what a hypocritical statement that was; how many times had Bruce done just that? But he didn’t say anything of the sort, instead just curling further into the Batsuit and wondering whether it was possible to run out of tears.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick eventually cried himself to sleep, dry tear tracks prominent on his skin. Bruce shuffled, trying to get him to lie down and extract himself out from beneath him, but even in his sleep, Dick clung on to him ferociously.</p><p>The rest of the kids had come in at some point during Dick’s breakdown, and had all been ushered away by Clark. Bruce would have to thank him somehow; he didn’t know how long it might’ve taken them to scour the entire park, and the thought of Dick doing something stupid while believing he’d killed Brenner had plagued him all day.</p><p>“I think,” Clark said slowly, “that this is because of the three months spent practically in isolation.”</p><p>Bruce opened his mouth to argue that there had been nothing of the kind, but closed it again, because his mind helpfully supplied the image of Dick eating seats down from everyone else, of Dick leaving a room the second it got a bit too full, Dick looking at his siblings as they roughhoused.</p><p>Bruce sighed. “It certainly didn’t help,” he said, because he also remembered how Dick had been when he’d killed the Joker.</p><p>“Someone should stay with him,” Clark said pointedly.</p><p>Bruce wasn’t about to argue. “I’ll bring him up to his room, have the kids sleep there.”</p><p>Clark nodded.</p><p>“Clark,” Bruce began, not knowing what he was going to say but sure of the fact that he had to say <em>something</em>, “thank you, for…”</p><p>Clark smiled, a smile that was purely <em>Clark Kent</em> without the Superman attached. Or maybe they were one and the same, because Superman had given him that same smile over the round table in the JLA headquarters and he’d seen that smile on the news as Superman carried children out of harm’s way.</p><p>“Of course, Bruce,” he said. “There’s nothing to say. You know I love Dick.”</p><p>Bruce nodded. He gathered Dick up in his arms, grunting a little at the effort but unwilling to pass him off to Clark. It’d been much easier to carry Dick as a child, even during the later years when he’d been a teenager and straining at the leash that was Batman’s shadow.</p><p>Standing up, he shifted Dick so they’d both be more comfortable, and headed upstairs.</p><p>“Coming?” he called to Clark.</p><p>Clark grinned. “Can’t say no to Alfred’s cooking.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There were five pairs of concerned eyes that followed Bruce as he made his way to Dick’s bedroom. Bruce was surprised to see Jason still there, trailing at the back of the pack with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.</p><p>Clark, beside Bruce, snorted. “You have a real flock now, Batman,” he said.</p><p>Bruce grunted. “More like Dick has a flock,” he said.</p><p>Clark gave him a knowing look, and said nothing.</p><p>Tim darted forward when they got to Dick’s room, pulling back the covers and fluffing up the pillows. “I’m guessing he’s definitely lost the death touch?”</p><p>Jason glared at him. “Do <em>not</em> say that when he’s awake,” he growled.</p><p>Bruce blinked in surprise. When had Jason, of all people, gotten protective over Dick?</p><p>Tim raised his arms in surrender. “Dude, I <em>know</em>. Why do you think I’m saying it now?”</p><p>“Yes, Tim,” Bruce interrupted, before their almost-argument could become a full-fledged argument. “He’s fine now. I suspect Brenner didn’t die either because of the altar being destroyed just before he made contact with Dick, or because the other altars not being there to support this one meant that the magic wasn’t working as it was supposed to.”</p><p>Dick wouldn’t let go of him, even now. Bruce stared at Damian until Damian caught on. A look of horror passed his face, and he started backing away, mouth opening as he protested, but Jason was there behind him.</p><p>He easily lifted Damian up by his waist, holding tight even as Damian kicked and clawed before plopping him down on the other side of Dick.</p><p>“Cuddle,” he said, pointing to Dick.</p><p>With a scowl, Damian shuffled under the sheets, pressing against Dick’s side. Bruce knew that Damian had been scared, because he would never have given in so easily otherwise.</p><p>Bruce turned to Tim, who slid under Bruce and wrapped his arms around Dick without wasting a second. Dick could now be passed along to Tim, but Damian shoved himself onto his brother’s chest, unwilling to be left out – especially for <em>Tim</em> – despite his protests.</p><p>“I need to change,” Bruce murmured. “Cassandra…”</p><p>“I’ll stay,” Cass said.</p><p>She got into the sheets at the other end, curling her legs around Dick’s. Tim threw her a pillow, which she shoved under her head.</p><p>“Steph?” she said.</p><p>Steph rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “But I can’t stay all night.”</p><p>Jason didn’t wait for Bruce to turn to him. He dragged a cushioned armchair over and scanned Dick’s bookshelf for a suitable book. Settling on <em>Inkheart</em>, he stuck his legs under the sheets and sunk into the chair.</p><p>Bruce swallowed down a wave of emotion at the sight of all of them in one place. How many nights had he wondered about the looser branches of his now sprawling family? He settled a hand on Jason’s shoulder on the way out, and counted it as a win when it wasn’t shrugged off.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Dick woke up more exhausted than when he’d gone to sleep, if that was possible. His eyes were crusty and glued shut, and there was a bone-deep tiredness that seeped into his very bones. He was in his room in the Manor, because he certainly didn’t use fabric softener when he was washing his sheets. And in the last few months, he’d gotten accustomed to waking in his childhood home.</p><p>But it was <em>warm</em>. Dick’s bed had been empty and cold since he’d arrived.</p><p>He pried a hand out of the tight sheets and scrubbed at his face, blinking into the darkness of the room.</p><p>Almost immediately, he shot up and flinched away, scrambling to the headboard as he tried not to touch the bed filled up with four out of five siblings. Were they breathing? <em>Why the fuck had they thought it was a good idea to—</em></p><p>“Dickface, chill,” Jason said slowly. Dick hadn’t even noticed him in the chair, feet sticking under the covers.</p><p>Staring at Jason’s face, the events of the past day or so slid through him like sleet. He slumped back into the bed, peering down at the living, <em>breathing</em> figures of Tim and Damian beside him, Cass opposite him. Another pillow was beside hers, as though someone else had been there before he’d woken.</p><p>“What happened?” he said.</p><p>Jason bookmarked the book, placing it onto the nightstand. He knew what Dick was asking.</p><p>“The EMTs said there was still a pulse. Really weak, but it was there. They took him straight to the hospital, and he’s on a respirator now,” Jason said. Cold hard facts, as was the way with Bats. Dick wasn’t complaining, though: sometimes the facts were more reassuring than empty placations. “They say he should be waking up soon. There’s technically nothing wrong with him.”</p><p>Dick let out a breath.</p><p>“But you,” Jason shook his head, “you don’t get to fucking do that again.”</p><p>Dick frowned at him. “What, almost kill someone?” It wasn’t as though Dick had done it on <em>purpose</em>.</p><p>“Fucking run off after shit like that happens, you ass.” Jason had withdrawn his feet. He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees. “You’re a hypocrite, you know that? You preach about solving problems together, and <em>family</em>, and then you go and make a mistake and suddenly all that goes out the window?"</p><p>“It wasn’t that simple,” Dick hissed, glancing at the sleeping bodies beside him to make sure they didn’t hear this conversation. “I thought he was <em>dead</em>. I thought Bruce—” He cut himself off before he could finish that sentence.</p><p>“Even if you’d killed him, it would’ve been a <em>mistake</em>. B fucking <em>knows</em> that. What do you think he was gonna do, send you to prison?” Jason scoffed. “He’s letting <em>me</em> into the house.”</p><p>“Jay, can we just stop with the fighting and—”</p><p>“Say it,” Jason said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Tell me you aren’t going to run off because you think Bruce is going to fly off the handle at some mistake you made. You’re allowed to be less than perfect, dipshit.”</p><p>Dick huffed. “Fine. I promise.”</p><p>“Holding you to that,” Tim said sleepily, curling into Dick’s chest and falling asleep again. It was at this moment that Dick realised he was shirtless; he could feel every burning exhale of Tim’s breath against his stomach.</p><p>Dick stared at Tim, then Jason, who looked equally as surprised. “How long was he awake?”</p><p>Jason shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe he was sleep-talking. Had a full conversation with me once about frozen mangos.” He reached to get the book before pausing. “Hey, you owe me a bike.”</p><p>Dick blinked. He was starting to crash again. “Did you guys not find it or something?”</p><p>“We found it in Crime Alley,” Jason said with a glare. “<em>Crime</em>. <em>Alley</em>. What did you fucking do, leave the keys in the ignition?”</p><p>Dick tried to remember but couldn’t. “I’ll get you a new one,” he said.</p><p>Jason seemed satisfied; he sat back in the chair and flicked through the book to where he’d bookmarked it.</p><p>“Hey, Jay?”</p><p>“What now?”</p><p>“Can I get a hug?”</p><p>It was probably a testament to how pathetic Dick currently looked, face still tear stained and a shakiness in his limbs that he couldn’t get rid of, and how off everything had been in the months he’d been shying away from touch, that Jason put his book down without a word and leaned over Tim to grab Dick in a fierce hug.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Bruce stuck his head in to Dick’s room once the others had headed down to breakfast.</p><p>“Dick?”</p><p>“Hey, B.” Dick’s smile was tired, even after spending almost an entire day asleep, but Bruce supposed that was the result of an emotionally taxing day.</p><p>“I wanted to see how you were—<em>oof</em>.”</p><p>Dick had barrelled into Bruce, wrapping his arms around him like an octopus, like how he’d leapt at him from strange heights and odd angles when he’d been younger and <em>significantly lighter</em>.</p><p>“Gotta make up for all the missed hugs, y’know?” Dick said, face smushed into Bruce’s neck.</p><p>Bruce would never admit it to anyone, and certainly not to Dick, but having Dick at the Manor but not being allowed to even grasp his shoulder had been…difficult, to say the least. He didn’t consider himself to be a tactile person – he and Dick were probably opposites on that spectrum – but there was something about not being <em>allowed</em> to touch his son, even a casual brush of the shoulders, that had settled strangely.</p><p>He squeezed Dick tight before letting him go, peering at his face to see any lingering signs of that frantic anxiety that’d been present yesterday. Dick looked away, grabbing Bruce by the arm and yanking him out of the room and down for breakfast.</p><p>The kitchen was noisy when they arrived. Tim was having a conversation with Clark from over the breakfast bar while Jason and Damian were egging Cass on to fit as many grapes in her mouth as she could.</p><p>Bruce rushed over to them as Cass reached for another handful, sending a death glare at Clark, the only other adult in the room. He grabbed the plate of grapes before Cass could put in another five.</p><p>“You can stuff your faces with fruits that aren’t circular and prone to cause choking,” he said gruffly.</p><p>Clark exchanged an amused look with Dick, who grinned at him.</p><p>He almost, out of habit, went to grab a plate of food and go into another room, but Damian pointedly kicked out a barstool beside him, and Dick realised, all over again, that it was <em>over</em>. He was free.</p><p>He grabbed Damian out of the chair and into a hug, squishing his cheeks and ruffling his hair like he’d been wanting to do for much too long. Damian, to his credit, only threatened to dismember him once.</p><p>“Cass, c’mon, I haven’t hugged you longer than these brats,” was all it took to get Cass jumping at Dick, leaping over the breakfast counter just as Alfred appeared with a fresh pot of coffee.</p><p>Dick caught her midair and clutched at her, revelling in the fact that he could finally do this again.</p><p>“Cassie is my favourite,” Dick said, “because she likes my hugs instead of just <em>tolerating </em>them.” Cass stuck a tongue out at the rest of them from over Dick’s shoulder.</p><p>Tim petulantly replied in kind, yelping when Jason slathered a spoonful of Greek yoghurt onto his tongue. “I like your hugs,” he said. “You just give a <em>lot</em> of them.”</p><p>“Because I see you like once a year!”</p><p>“That,” Tim said, pointing a spoon at him, “is a blatant exaggeration. Clark, tell him.”</p><p>“Dick, that was a blatant exaggeration,” Clark said seriously. “I happen to know you see Tim <em>twice</em> most years.”</p><p>Tim whipped his head around to Clark, throwing a blueberry at him. Clark neatly opened his mouth and caught it.</p><p>“That,” Bruce said, “is what happens when you try and involve innocent bystanders in your arguments.”</p><p>Dick had walked around behind Clark and had his arms around the man’s neck, head on his shoulder. He remembered a time when he’d had to climb onto something to do this, instead of needing to stoop down.</p><p>Clark patted his arm, swivelling around on the barstool to give Dick an awkward sideways hug.</p><p>“You spent the night?” Dick asked, with a long and utterly conspicuous look between him and Bruce.</p><p>Clark sighed. “Yes, I spent the night. No, it was <em>not</em> in Bruce’s room.”</p><p>Money passed from Damian and Jason to Tim and Cass, Tim immediately picking up his phone to text Steph. He put it down again guiltily when Alfred cleared his throat.</p><p>Dick frowned at them. “Why did none of you get me in on this bet?”</p><p>Cass snorted. “You were <em>out</em>,” she said.</p><p>“Yeah,” Tim agreed emphatically. “<em>Out</em> out. Like, had to be carried up from the Batcave in B’s arms like a fish—”</p><p>Jason choked. “Like a <em>what—”</em></p><p>“Grayson did <em>not</em> imitate a fish—”</p><p>“Timmy’s turn,” Dick announced, breaking up the fight. He hadn’t felt this buoyant in <em>ages</em>. At the look of apprehension on Tim’s face, he said with a grin, “C’mon, Timbo, I haven’t hugged you in <em>months</em>.”</p><p>Tim paused for a second too long, because Dick’s smile started to fade without his consent.</p><p>To his absolute horror, Dick found his eyes welling up. Tim shared this horror, too, apparently, because as the kitchen froze, he leapt up and yanked Dick into a hug to desperately prevent the floodgates from opening.</p><p>“Now you’ve done it, Drake,” Damian muttered. “I didn’t realise it was possible to have this many tears in a single five foot ten body.”</p><p>Jason kicked Damian under the table, earning himself a sharp look from both Alfred and Bruce.</p><p>“Would you believe me if I told you I can turn them on and off?” Dick said in Tim’s ear.</p><p>Tim shrugged, arms still wrapped around Dick’s middle. “It makes sense, to be honest. You’re touch-deprived. Touch starved.” He snorted. “<em>Skin hungry</em>.”</p><p>Dick grimaced at the last one. “Never say that again,” he said. “What am I, some kind of part zombie?”</p><p>“Touch is a basic human need, Dick,” Tim said. “And you’ve gone three entire months without it. Of course there’d be side effects.”</p><p>“Oi, losers,” Jason called. “Breakfast’s getting cold.”</p><p>Dick released Tim from his mandatory embrace, and they went to join the others at the table.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>References:<br/>- Definitions at the start taken from Merriam-Webster and Collins Dictionary. Yes it's technically a math thing. Yes I got distracted doing math revision and jotted it down because I knew I could use it as a fic title.<br/>- Dick was Target in Chuck Dixon's run of Nightwing (1996) when he was framed for murder and had to solve the crime as someone other than Dick Grayson or Nightwing.<br/>- Clancy going to med school in New York happens after Dick graduates the police academy in Nightwing (1996) Vol. 5 and I love her for it but I miss her sm<br/>- The adaptoid is taken from Marvel<br/>- Dick killed the Joker in Joker's Last Laugh when he thought the Joker had killed Tim, but they managed to resurrect him. </p><p>I have classes starting from Monday (=////) so the rate at which I push out fics will definitely be dropping (or maybe it'll pick up lol maybe I'll suddenly start posting a fic a day to put off actual classwork)</p><p>Thank you for reading!! Let me know how you liked it and feel free to <a href="https://fanfictiongreenirises.tumblr.com/">say hi on tumblr</a>!!</p><p>EDIT: I used to have my bingo card displayed in as the second chapter of this fic, but updating it got tedious, so I've now put a link to it in the series description.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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